DUKE OF PORTLAND

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 105, 28 January 1938, Page 3

DUKE OF PORTLAND

Source Of Many Titles The Duke of Portland, whose entertainment of the King of the Belgians and his mother at Welbeck recently, gave rise to so’many fantastic rumours, must be nearly unique among peers from the variety of places and counties from which he takes his titles. Apart froin his dukedom he is Marquis of Titchfield, Southampton. He is Earl of Portland. Dorset; he'is Viscount Wootlstock of Woodstock. Oxfordshire. He is Baron Cirencester of Cirencester. Gloucestershire, and Baron Bolsover of Bolsover Castle Derbyshire. This last he inherited from his stepmother The wide area of his titles represents in part William of Orange's determination that "the House of Bentinek should be placed on a level with the house of Howard and Seymour, of Russell and Cavendish in wealth and dignity." but although William achieved a great deal In that direction ire was balked in his effort, to make the Bentincks great North Wales magnates as well.

In 1695 he actually made out an order to the Treasury by which Portland would have received estates in Denbighshire worth £100,600 for 'in annual rent to the Crown of six-and-eightpence. Moreover, those included certain royalties which “the people of North Wales could not patiently see in the hands of any subject.” Elizabeth had made a grant of part of those estates to Dudley, but the Denbighshire people bad risen in revolt and the idea was given up. A more orderly but not less effective protest stopped the gnir.i in 1665. The King gave way unwillingly to a unanimous address from the Commons.